Water shortages caused by population growth, urbanization and climate change and brine waste management are increasing challenges for coastal and inland regions, with high-salinity brines presenting a particularly challenging problem. These high-salinity waters require the use of thermally driven treatment processes, such as membrane distillation, which can suffer from high complexity and cost.
Although reverse osmosis (RO) is the de facto standard technology for desalination, RO is not capable of treating fluids with high osmotic pressures, such as produced water, and RO-generated waste brines. Thermal desalination processes, such as membrane distillation (MD), are the treatment method of choice for these brines, due to their relative insensitivity to salinity (FIG. 1A). In the MD process, a temperature gradient across a hydrophobic membrane (hot brine and cold distillate) drives the transport of water vapor across the membrane, while liquid water and dissolved salts are prevented from passing through. Unfortunately, these hot, high-salinity brines are highly corrosive, which makes heat management (for example, heat exchangers) in these systems expensive due to the need for corrosion-resistant metals, such as nickel alloys.